Small Mortgages, Big Opportunities!

Some low- and middle-income home buyers are having a hard time getting mortgages for an unexpected reason: The loans they’re applying for are too small.

This could be a great opportunity for private mortgage investors.

Lenders extended about 106,000 mortgages with balances between $10,000 and $70,000 in the U.S. last year, worth $5.1 billion. That is down 38% from almost 171,000 in 2009, according to figures compiled by Attom Data Solutions, a real-estate data firm. The drop-off at the bottom end of the market has been far swifter than at the top. Origination was down a more modest 26% for mortgages between $70,000 and $150,000, and it rose 65% for mortgages above that range.

Only about a quarter of homes that sold for less than $70,000 were financed with a mortgage, while almost 80% of sales between $70,000 and $150,000 had one, according to an Urban Institute analysis last year. Low-end borrowers had their applications denied at a higher rate than those taking out bigger mortgages even when comparing borrowers with similar credit quality, according to the think tank.